Friday, May 05, 2017

Big Brother Is Spying On Everyone

The NSA is allowed under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to spy on foreign powers without a court warrant but the law prohibits the targeting of Americans for such surveillance. If the NSA accidentally intercepts Americans or information about them overseas, it is supposed to legally put the information in a virtual lock box.

But starting in 2011, former President Obama made it easier to access that information, essentially creating keys for intelligence professionals and even his own political aides to unlock the NSA’s lock box to consume surveillance on Americans.

Circa reported Wednesday that since those changes, the number of requests to search NSA records for Americans’ information tripled under the former administration.

Circa’s declassification request was delivered to the White House and the Directorate of National Intelligence. Ironically, it cites an executive order that Obama himself issued allowing Americans to make declassification requests and get an answer within a year.

Circa request aggregate numbers by year for searches on the names of or requests to unmasks Americans who worked as presidential candidates, members of Congress, congressional staff, federal judges, journalists, clergy, lawyers, and doctors.

“We believe these aggregate numbers by year and category pose no risk to national security and will provide significant illumination to the public about the frequency of unmasked or searched U.S. person identities who were either intercepted or the subject of intercepted conversations,” Circa wrote.

“Such transparency is particularly valuable given the changes to unmasking rules that former President Barack Obama began implementing in 2011 and the special recognition the 2014 revision of minimization rules gave these categories of Americans."